


Necessary Evil

by Epi_girl



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Mind the Tags, Substance Abuse, also notts not doing too great, i love these two, its just poorly written angst, sorry that this is my first contribution to the fandom???, this is from like midnight im sorry it's so bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-03-09 15:58:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13484907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Epi_girl/pseuds/Epi_girl
Summary: It's just a habit. That's all it is.(Or, Nott tries too hard to get away.)





	Necessary Evil

See, the thing about Nott is, she drinks. Drinks a little or drinks a lot, depending on the circumstances.

There are some instances where she doesn't need to drink. Days where she's on the road with Caleb and the talking is enough, or Frumpkin manages to distract her with that fluffy orange fur that's so fun to pet that she forgets about the flask strapped to her hip. Days full of looking for books or cooking because they've got food for the time being, and she doesn't need the alcohol. Those are the good days, the ones she can recall down to the tiny details, because that's almost the only time where things aren't so foggy that they barely come to mind afterwards.

  
The days where she does need that trusty silver flask? Those are a lot more common.

  
Sometimes she gets caught when she steals. She's sneaky, yeah, and small, but she's also a goblin, and that does make getting noticed a lot more threatening. She's been punched or kicked or thrown by shopkeepers more times than she can count. It's nice when Caleb helps out with little thefts, makes it easier for her, but when she does it alone, she so often needs a drink afterwards.

There's so much going on in her head all the time and she can never get it to go away. It's loud and scary sometimes and she just wants to be able to relax.

(It's funny to her. Aren't goblins supposed to be mindless?)

Nott doesn't like to kill people. It should go without saying for almost anyone, but she really doesn't like it. It scares her, that firing off a bolt from her crossbow, or slashing someone with her dagger can end someone's life, take them away forever. It's unavoidable sometimes, though, especially in her situation, so she's done it a few times. Watched someone's shirt turn red as they fought to pull the bolt from their barely breathing chest, stared for a moment at someone gasping out prayers to some god she'd never heard of before she turned on her heel and ran away, stabbed someone until they stopped moving because they'd tried to kill her first. She's not proud of it, but she's kind of used to it, and she's definitely used to drinking until the face of whoever she'd had to murder this time fades from her mind.

She doesn't just drink when bad things happen, though. She'll drink if she's bored, she'll drink if she's mad, she just drinks whenever she doesn't know what else to do. She's used to that burn in her throat by now, it's almost comforting.

  
Almost. There's some part of her that can never really ignore what she's actually doing to herself.

  
Caleb doesn't like when she drinks. Oh, sure, he thinks he's good at hiding it with how often he'll help her get whatever booze she fancies at the time, but Nott isn't stupid and she can read her companion like an open book when he thinks she isn't looking. She feels bad about it, sometimes, when he's stirring beside her on a barstool reading, and she's slamming back her who-fucking-knows shot of who-even-cares in the past half hour. She knows he doesn't like it and it makes her not like it and it makes her not like herself.

And what does she do when she doesn't like herself?

She drinks.

It's a funny thing, really it is! She laughs about it late at night when Caleb's fast asleep with Frumpkin curled up on top of him, as she looks around the room she had to steal to afford, hands shaking around the flask.

It's empty before the sun comes up.

  
It's a bad habit, like a lot of the things she does, and it's not like Caleb doesn't have them, but she knows he's getting worried. Nott doesn't like it when Caleb worries. It means he doesn't sleep and barely talks and she has to steal even more because he's thinking too much to really earn them some money. So she flashes smiles and does reckless things and acts like a silly little child just the way he expects her to and prays that the worry goes away.

  
...There's only so long you can go like that without slipping up, and she learns that the hard way.

Then again, is there any other way she's ever learned?

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> this ended so weirdly i'm sorry


End file.
